Save Article

‘A Chill in the Air’ Review: A Tuscan Idyll Before the War

Iris Origo listened in on Italy’s chatter. “You’ll see, the Duce will stop the war at the last moment,” a taxi driver tells her.

By

Dan Hofstadter

Aug. 30, 2018 8:21 p.m. ET

Born in 1902 into circumstances of almost unimaginable privilege, Iris Origo, née Cutting, grew up in Fiesole and Florence, the daughter of an Anglo-Irish noblewoman and an American millionaire. But the shy, warmhearted young woman eschewed high society and decided early on to devote herself to writing, especially to the art of biography. Though she wrote a life of the poet Giacomo Leopardi among other such works, she is now best known for the diary titled “War in Val d’Orcia,” which she composed in 1943-44 during the Allied invasion of Italy and the fierce Nazi resistance to it. The manuscript, not originally intended...